America on the road to ruin

Our friends south of the border seem to have mistaken anarchy for liberty.

PHOTO: Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images

By David Booth, Postmedia News

Originally published: August 16, 2012

SMALL

MEDIUM

LARGE

California’s famed Pacific Coast Highway is falling apart. Perhaps the most picturesque road in the world, certainly the most famous, really is crumbling. What isn’t actually falling into the ocean is deteriorating rapidly into a motocross track or ground under repair.

Its multi-lane sidekick, the 101, isn’t much better. Were California’s scenic countryside substituted for a crusty desert passage, it could easily pass for a Third World thoroughfare. Indeed, I can personally attest that Namibian pavement is positively pristine compared with this famed American turnpike and I even seem to remember the pavement of poverty-stricken Morocco as being easier on loose fillings. And, sadly, California’s freeways may be the perfect metaphor for how far the world’s most powerful nation has fallen (and, if you get any pushback on this contention from your American friends, just remind them that the average Canadian’s net worth is now, for the first time, greater than their own).

For one thing, America’s highways are bloated. Never mind the illusion that California is populated with bead-crafting hippies who spend every waking moment hugging Douglas firs; the truth is that the typical car prowling the Golden State’s highways and byways is much bigger than in any other country. Priuses, despite their media hype, are still a rarity despite gasoline now costing upward of $5 a U.S. gallon ($1.32 a litre) and the numerous advantages — such as a free pass into the 405’s much sought-after carpool lanes — their “greenness” engenders.

The hypocrisy that plagues American politics — as in the Republicans’ foaming-at-the-mouth hyperbole denouncing “Obamacare” when anyone with a brain knows that the legislation was based on a mandate proposed by their very own presidential candidate — is also front and centre on their roadways; a surprising number of those aforementioned Priuses are among the fastest cars on the highway. Toyota has indeed improved its much-vaunted gasoline/electric Synergy drive system over the last decade, but even the most ardent hybrid fan will not claim that they are particularly efficient cruising at supra-legal speeds.

And while U.S. exceptionalism — thank you, Alexis de Tocqueville — may have originated before the invention of the automobile, it surely is prevalent on its thoroughfares. Judging by traffic on the 101, virtually everyone with a driver’s licence righteously believes he or she is God’s gift to motoring and thus deserving of a prime spot in the almighty’s chosen tract, the fast lane. The slow lane, where no self-respecting Yankee Doodle Dandy would be caught dead, is shunned by all save the occasional slowpoke with low self esteem. Yes, I know that we here in the Great White Frozen North also have our left-lane bandits, but ours are usually solitary diehard moralists who feel they have the right — nay, the need — to force everyone to slow down (for their own safety, of course). In America, having the best, just like being the best, is considered a birthright and so what if I am slowing you down.

What’s truly amusing, in this country of supposed rugged individualists, is that the result of all this inappropriate lane hogging is a form of communism of cars. Although those deluded speedsters may claim an inalienable right to the faster lanes, it doesn’t mean they will actually speed up to make use of the privilege. Indeed, they all just poke along at the same speed they would if they were in one of the slower lanes. Things are so egalitarian, in fact, that even in the places where the 101 spreads expansively across four lanes, everyone is doddling along at an almost identical 120 kilometres an hour. Since tailgating also seems to be a national pastime, passing is virtually impossible.

And then there is the simply illogical. In California (and a number of other states), it is perfectly OK to split lanes on a motorcycle but highly illegal to ride on the shoulder. In other words, it’s perfectly all right for me to ride in between two cars that are both speeding along at 97 km/h, but woe be the fool who dares ride on the empty shoulder when traffic is stopped dead. And you wondered how the Tea Party managed to convince janitors that those making more than $250,000 a year need a tax break.

Vilify me all you want for rampant xenophobia (I plead justifiable criticism after the travesty that was the U.S. versus Canada women’s soccer match) for painting American drivers with such a wide brush. Fault my analysis for using too small a database for statistical purity (though California’s population of 38 million is greater than Canada’s). But, in my (not so) humble opinion, U.S. driving, like its politics, has deteriorated over the last decade and for the same reason. Our friends south of the border seem to have mistaken anarchy for liberty and their idealistic pursuit of individual freedoms leaves little room for the other, whether it be in the legislature or on the freeway.